Top Essays USB Drive

This USB drive contains 100 of the top This I Believe audio broadcasts of the last ten years, plus some favorites from Edward R. Murrow's radio series of the 1950s. It's perfect for personal or classroom use! Click here to learn more.

I am Drew Halliday. I believe in myself, I believe in my own personal journey and the importance of making positive decisions. I believe that my presence in this world is important due to its nature of positivity. I believe I am important in a symbiotic way with others around me. Not every aspect of me has reached maximum efficiency however I believe that people around me have much to learn from me in many aspects. I believe that success is interchangeable with happiness. I believe more so with each passing year in the concept of karma. I believe and know that when I have committed wrong, equal wrongs have been done to me. I believe and know from experience when someone in my life is doing wrong to others on this earth fate deals them a sour hand in return. I believe that relationships are the most important gifts that we have on this earth and should be top priority for all of us to keep strong and positive. Relationships to me are of the upmost importance and as long as I find the friendship or relationship to be with a mature, rational, moral, and positive person I will not let go of my connection with that person. I believe that we all have an obligation to help and support each other. If each one of us on this earth were to give something positive to a stranger each day this world would be what some describe to be Heaven. (I.e. if it’s raining offer someone walking a ride that obviously is going your way) This sense of giving would ripple through our reality and spread happiness and trust among all of us adding good karma to our tone as a world. Like I said before I believe in the rolling effect of our actions when one of us decides to do negative actions we provoke others to do the same and vice versa. This concept ripples to great sizes. I am human however I believe that when I do positive I am doing good and adding to the growth of good karma in our world. I believe in human power, each one of us is born with extreme powers that are unfathomable. Depending on your desire to harness your potential I believe humans can accomplish most nearly everything that could be desired in reality. I also believe that no one else believes this entirely, we seem to mirror cattle in the way that we do and believe what’s possible is what we are told is categorized that way. I believe that we all have some greater purpose that individually our lives seem random and unimportant but on a large scale that we are like precise clockwork but too complex to formulate, match structure with or find patterns in. I don’t believe that evil is in excess, in my mind evil is something that is introduced to our world like a vaccine. Working in a similar way to real vaccinations I think a large portion of evil is harmless and is a weakened version or prototype of real evil in order to prepare us to defend from what threatens us. Some evil however has no positive aspects and is unconscionable to commit. However, it is only rational to me that without evil, good could not exist. There would be no contrast from good. Only what is, and in that case there could be no enlightenment from choosing what is positive instead of negative. Without the choice between the two we would have no emotional or moral growth during our time on this plane of reality. I believe that evil and good are dependent on each other but now that they both have come into existence and each of us has the power to bring about either into our world it is our obligation as humans to do good. I’m not sure if I believe that my purpose on the earth is to please a God, but I am in agreement with the teachings of what the God of Catholicism believes in and I have been raised Catholic. At times I wonder if others around me in the religion are only consistent because of their rational-self interest. Some I feel are religious because they feel the pressure of a God, that they only do good to go to heaven or receive benefit. I think that if all of us followed these teachings and spread good in our actions to each other we would reach a physical heaven that would be present here on Earth. I believe in forgiveness to an extreme, all of us make mistakes to accept flaws and promote forgiveness and change is what this world needs. I believe that we as humans can have a connection on a different level beyond our rational consciousness. I have felt it, there are some spiritual connections with human beings that cannot be described to and rationalized by our confined black and white minds. It seems now we need science to prove everything before we believe in it as a world. Science tries to give structure and understanding to things that are too complex for our neophyte flawed physical bodies and brains. I believe that love in its broadest sense is the most important quality present on earth, in its essence the driving force behind all that exists. And I believe I love this world and it is my duty to protect and spread good in the world and

Essay of the Week

When Alexxandra Shuman was in eighth grade, she was diagnosed with clinical depression. But it took more than medication for her to feel happy again. Ms. Shuman believes she has to look in the right places on her journey to finding happiness. Click here to read her essay.

What Students Believe

Throughout the school year, young people around the world write statements of belief as a classroom exercise. And thousands of those students have submitted their essays to our series. Click here to read a sampling of what young people believe.